Hoya Staff Writer Friday, August 25, 2006 Courtesy: Georgetown University Fr. Ryan Maher, S.J., assistant dean for academic affairs at SFS Qatar, addresses the class of 2010 during the freshman convocation cermony this week. The event marks the start of the second academic

DOHA, Qatar – To the tunes of the Georgetown alma mater and the Qatari national anthem, the School of Foreign Service welcomed the Class of 2010 to its branch location here during a convocation ceremony earlier this month. The 35 students in the class hail from 13 countries, including the United States, and are the second class admitted to the SFS-Q, which opened last summer. The SFS-Q convocation included many of the same procedures seen at the main campus convocation, including the academic procession, recitation of the honor pledge and reading of the university charter. But there were other elements that distinguished the ceremony as uniquely Middle Eastern. During the ceremony, students were segregated by gender, with male students seated in the front rows. The invocation included an Islamic prayer recited in Arabic by Ahmed Helal (SFS-Q ’09). Despite differences in style, the ideas underlining the convocation are the same in Doha as in Washington. The new students at SFS-Q begin a new school year, and a Georgetown education in the Jesuit tradition just like their counterparts on the main campus, administrators said. “We may be separated by seven time zones . but we share the Georgetown experience,” University President John J. DeGioia said in a pre-recorded speech played during the ceremony. Fr. Ryan aher, S.J., assistant dean for academic affairs at SFS-Q, said during his convocation address that he could tell the difference that one year at Georgetown has made in the lives of the SFS-Q sophomores. Maher also mentioned a discussion he had with students who asked about his experience on Sept. 11, 2001. Maher said that after learning that the World Trade Center had been hit, he was walking to the cafeteria on main campus and heard three students speaking Arabic and laughing at the same time. He said that in that moment, he had felt a momentary surge of anger toward the entire uslim world. ” We acknowledge those dark corners and ask, `What are we going to do about it?’ Georgetown’s answer is `education.'” Several SFS-Q students expressed positive feelings about Georgetown’s Jesuit and Catholic identity. “I liked Georgetown because of its Jesuit basis for teaching and the ethics and morals in education,” Hadi Darvishi (SFS-Q ’10) said. Saleh Abdelnasser – who attended the convocation with his son Amr (SFS-Q ’10) – said that as a Muslim father, he was not concerned about Georgetown’s Jesuit affiliation. “I’m not sensitive about that matter at all. I have the idea that all religions have the same origin, and I was able to convey this message to my son.” Georgetown is the fifth American university to set up camp in Education City, the 2,500-acre campus just outside of Doha run by Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development. SFS-Q students fulfill the same academic requirements as main-campus SFS students and graduate with a degree in international politics.